1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile terminal and a method of controlling the operation of the mobile terminal, and more particularly, to a mobile terminal which can be connected to an audio output device via short-range communication and a method of controlling the operation of the mobile terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile terminals are portable devices, which can provide users with various services such as a voice calling service, a video calling service, an information input/output service, and a data storage service.
As the types of services provided by mobile terminals diversify, an increasing number of mobile terminals have been equipped with various complicated functions such as capturing photos or moving pictures, playing music files or moving image files, providing game programs, receiving broadcast programs and providing wireless internet services and have thus evolved into multimedia players.
In the meantime, headsets or earphones are a type of audio output devices that can be worn on the ears of a user and can directly transmit audio signals to the user. There are various types of audio output devices available. With a recent development of various wireless headsets equipped with short-range communication technology such as Bluetooth, the demand for improving the design and structure of such audio output devices so as to enhance wearability has rapidly increased. Audio output devices equipped with short-range communication technology are capable of providing not only an audio output feature but also other various features such as a phonebook feature, a call history feature, a message feature and a file transmission feature.
Such audio output devices as Bluetooth headsets, however, may readily process commands input thereto even in the middle of being connected to mobile terminals and thus may often cause noise or unwanted events. In addition, an automatic system recovery (ASR) may be automatically executed, thereby requiring users to manually cancel the ASR menu in order to escape.
Moreover, Bluetooth provides only limited bandwidths and can thus support data rates of only 3 Mbps at best even when using Enhanced Data Rate (EDR). Thus, if a phonebook feature is used or a call history or a list of messages is searched through with a mobile phone while listening to music from a Bluetooth audio output device connected to the mobile terminal, the output of audio signals may often be undesirably stopped. In order to address this problem, a command to suspend an audio playback operation may be issued from the Bluetooth audio output device to the mobile terminal so that the output of audio signals can be suspended. Then, when the use of the phonebook feature or the search of the call history or the message list is complete, a command to resume the audio playback operation may be issued from the Bluetooth audio output device to the mobile terminal. In this case, however, the mobile terminal may mistakenly consider the command to suspend the audio playback operation as a command to terminate the audio playback operation and may thus terminate the whole audio playback operation. Alternatively, the mobile terminal 100 may continue to generate an audio stream, but the Bluetooth audio output device may not be able to properly receive the audio stream from the mobile terminal 100. As a result, the output of audio signals may not be properly resumed even in response to the command to resume the audio playback operation. In addition, the Bluetooth audio device may malfunction due to a command mistakenly input thereto during the suspension of the audio playback operation.